How to Use Donor Newsletters to Raise More Money for Your Non-Profit by Joe Garecht TheFundraisingAuthority.com Week #5: The Complete Guide to Using Donor Newsletters to Raise More Money, Starting Today!
Welcome back to our class How to Use Donor Newsletters to Raise More Money for Your Non- Profit! I hope you enjoyed last week s class guide and podcast. Before we begin this week s module, I want to remind you that if you have any questions about what you are learning, or if you want to review a specific idea to see if it will work at your organization, you may e-mail me at any time at joe@thefundraisingauthority.com and I would be happy to answer your questions and help you think through the strategies that we are presenting. Last week, we looked at how to create amazing snail mail newsletters. In this, our final week, we re focusing on where your donor newsletters fit in with your fundraising efforts. Enjoy! Donor Newsletters & Fundraising: Two Schools of Thought As we mentioned during week #1 of this class, there are two primary schools of thought when it comes to donor newsletters. The first says that donor newsletters are a direct fundraising tool. There are a lot of non-profit fundraisers and consultants who argue that you should be using your newsletters to raise money each and every time you send them out. This means featuring Donate Now! buttons and links in your e-mail newsletters, and including remittance envelopes with your snail mail newsletters. The second school of thought argues that donor newsletters are a support mechanism for other fundraising activities. These fundraisers and consultants say that you should be using your newsletters as a communications tool to help you cultivate and steward your donors. Because you want your donors to see your newsletters as a cultivation method, rather than a fundraising ask, you shouldn t directly solicit donations in your e-mail or snail mail newsletters. I m a strong proponent of the second school. If you include donation asks or remittance envelopes in your newsletters, you will received donations. But not as many as you would if you sent out a stand-alone fundraising appeal. Your newsletters are weak fundraising tools people will send in some money, but because you are not sending out something that is 100% focused on fundraising, fewer people will respond and those that do will generally give less than they would to a true fundraising letter. But and this is important - if you include a reply device or push fundraising, people will still see your newsletter as a fundraising ask / communication. This means that you will lose most of the value you would have gained from sending out a true cultivation/stewardship mailing, and also need to wait longer to send out a regular fundraising appeal, so that it doesn t seem like you are sending out two appeals in a row. Don t try to fundraise through your newsletters. Instead, use them as a powerful support mechanism for all of your other fundraising activities. 2
Donor Newsletters as a Cultivation and Stewardship Tool Your donor newsletters can and should form the backbone of your donor communications efforts. They should support everything you are trying to do with your fundraising program by keeping people informed about your work and interested in your mission and vision for the future. Non-profits that run a strong donor newsletter program (without fundraising through their newsletters) will see an increase across all of their other fundraising tactics, including major donor fundraising, personal asks, board fundraising, events, online fundraising and more. But the biggest return you are likely to see is in your e-mail and direct mail fundraising appeals. While good donor newsletters will strengthen every aspect of your development program, in my experience sending out great e-mail newsletters will directly result in more and bigger donations through your e-mail appeal letters and sending out great snail mail newsletter will directly result in more and bigger donations through your snail mail fundraising letters. This makes sense: if people are hearing from you regularly through e-mail, they are more likely to give through an e-mail fundraising appeal. And, if people are hearing from you regularly through snail mail, they are more likely to give through a snail mail fundraising letter. Thus, one of the biggest and best ways to raise more money through your donor newsletters is to use them to strengthen your donor relationships so that you ll dramatically increase your revenue from e- mail and snail mail fundraising appeals. Because of this, I want to spend the rest of this class module showing you how to write better and more successful e-mail and snail mail fundraising letters. Your E-Mail Newsletter and E-Mail Fundraising Appeals Sending out great e-mail newsletters will result in your ability to raise far more money through your e-mail fundraising appeals. But to truly maximize your results, you will need to make sure that you are sending out strong, well-written e-mail fundraising letters. What do good, high-producing e-mail fundraising letters look like? What are the best practices to get the best results? While your e-mail fundraising letters will vary depending on whether they are part of a coordinated campaign, selling tickets for an event, etc., there are some basic rules of thumb that will allow you to see maximum results with your e-mail fundraising efforts: Similarities to Offline Direct Mail In many ways, e-mail fundraising letters are similar to offline fundraising letters. Just as with offline letters, e-mail fundraising letters must be compelling and emotional. Remember, for your readers your organization and your mission matters! Tell people stories that tug on the heart strings, that make them cry. In fundraising letters, people don t want to hear a list of boring statistics and facts. Sure, one or two surprising or super-compelling facts might make all the 3
difference. But a list of twelve percentages with footnotes supporting them? Not compelling when sent as part of as fundraising letter. Instead, tell stories, use charts, make people cry. Think: if I had 30 seconds to tell someone about my non-profit, and the success of our group depended on that one person writing a check on the spot what would I say? Then write that pitch as your first draft. The second key similarity with offline fundraising mail is: write your e-mail in such a way that your compelling content gets read. People are busy. Even if they aren t really busy, most people think they are. Very few people think they have the time to read through your fundraising e- mail. Most people will skim your e-mail to see if it is worth reading. Where do they look to make their decisions? The e-mail subject and first sentence, the pictures, the headlines and bolded or underlined words, and the P.S. That s it just 20-30 second of skimming. How do you capitalize on this tendency? First, give them lots to skim. Use section headlines, a great subject and opening sentence and P.S., pictures, and bolded/underlined words. Then, make sure that all of this skim-able content works together to tell the entire story of your letter. Ask yourself: if someone only skimmed my letter, using the items listed above, would they know what I am saying? Would they get the whole story? Differences from Offline Direct Mail The primary difference between offline fundraising letters and e-mail fundraising letters is length. For many organizations, long (or super-long) snail-mail fundraising letters work. Some organizations send 3, 4, or even 5 page fundraising letters and know that their constituencies appreciate the length because they make money with these letters. The rule online is less, less, less. I have never seen an e-mail fundraising letter that was the equivalent of a 4 page offline letter get read. When writing online fundraising e-mails, keep it relatively short I would suggest trying to keep your e-mail asks to 400 words or less. Anything more than that, and people simply won t want to read it. If necessary, you can include links to your website to explain additional information, but for the actual e-mail, keep it short and to the point. The Ask Remember as we said earlier, people don t give unless they are asked. If you are sending out an e-mail fundraising letter, be sure it includes a clear, concise, and understandable ask. Tell people that you need money. Tell them how much you need and why you need it. Then make an ask, by asking the reader to click on a button or link to donate now. Make the button or link big and bold, and don t be shy about asking your mission matters, and you need money to carry out the good work that your organization does! 4
Your Snail Mail Newsletter and Direct Mail Fundraising Appeals Sending out great snail mail newsletters will result in your ability to raise far more money through your direct mail fundraising appeals. But to truly maximize your results, you will need to make sure that you are sending out strong, well-written snail mail fundraising letters. How do you write a successful snail mail fundraising appeal? Studies have shown that when scanning your letter, people will read certain key items first, and use those items as an indicator as to whether or not they should read the rest of the letter. Those items are: The main headline of your letter The sub-headlines of your letter The pictures / picture captions Pull-quotes in the letter The P.S. (and P.S.S., etc.) at the bottom of your letter Bolded, underlined and italicized words The first paragraph of your letter What does this mean for you, as you write the letter? It means that, first and foremost, you need to include these items in your letter you may not normally write P.S. s in your personal letters, but when you are writing a fundraising letter, you absolutely have to have one. The same goes for using bolded words, headlines, etc. Second, it means that these items the ones people read first need to be exceptionally strong. Remember people are reading the headlines, the P.S., the captions, etc. to see if they want to read the rest of your letter. These items are, in a sense, ads for the rest of your letter. If you succeed in getting people interested they will read through more of the letter. If not, they will continue on with their day and your letter will end up in the trash can. This means that you should spend extra time to make sure that these items are exceptionally strong and well-written. The 7 Principles of Writing Effective Direct Mail Let s a take a look at the seven most important principles of writing effective direct mail: #1 Write for Your Readers, not Your High School English Teacher Great direct mail fundraising letters needn t be perfect, they just need to work. And fundraising letters that work are written in a conversational tone that is easily understood by the vast majority of people who are reading them. This means no high-brow language! No acronyms that people don t understand. No sentences that start, Our multi-disciplinary team-based approach to forensic interviewing (I m looking at you, Children s Advocacy Centers!) 5
Direct mail studies have shown that the best letters are written on about a sixth-grade level. Great letters feel conversational they sound like someone is talking to you. Letters like this are easier to read. If people feel like your letter is difficult to read or understand, guess what? They ll stop reading it! It s ok to use sentence fragments or extra punctuation, and to start sentences with prepositions if doing these things makes your letter easier to read. Of course, your letter still needs to look like it was written by a professional, so typos are out, as is sloppy writing. You want your letter to be conversational, but not sloppy. #2 Let Your Letter be as Long as it Needs to Be Don t set artificial rules about how long your letters can be. Don t decide that letters from your organization can only be 2 pages (or gasp! 1 page) long. Take the time to state your case. Take the space you need to write a great letter and make a great ask. Most non-profit fundraising letters are at least 3 pages long. Many are longer. I ve seen organizations successfully use 7 and even 10 page letters in the past. Whatever the length of your letter, just make sure you follow the design rules we will discuss in next week s module including headlines, bolded phrases, etc. Of course, you don t want to make your letters longer than they need to be. If it really takes you 8 pages to state your case well, do it. But it you could tighten it up to just 4 or 5 pages, do that instead. Readers can and will get mad and stop reading if you try to get them to read 8 pages but repeat yourself and use circuitous language along the way. One other consideration is postage: use your postage meter (or one at the local post office) to see how many pages you can include in a letter (using the envelopes and paper you are planning to use) for the price of one stamp (or one postal unit). Be extra careful about adding a piece of paper beyond that limit. For example, if you can send 3 pages in an envelope with a reply envelope for $.45, and your letter is 3 ½ pages long, ask yourself if you can trim off that extra ½ page of copy to save the extra postage charges. Of course, if your letter is 6 pages long, that s a different story, and you re likely going to need to pay the extra postage no matter how much editing you do, assuming your letter was fairly well-written to begin with. #3 Appeal to Your Reader s Emotions Direct mail fundraising letters should be emotional. The best of them appeal to readers deepest feelings and desires, things like their faith, their worldview and beliefs about humanity, their hope for a better world for their children, their sense of justice and fairness, etc. People give when you touch their soul. Sound over the top? It s not it s what works. The best letters appeal to emotion without feeling sappy or contrived. Use stories. Use pictures, if appropriate. Show the concrete difference your organization is making in the world. Connect 6
people with your mission and your results. Make them feel what you are saying, instead of just reading what you are saying. Does this mean you shouldn t clearly explain the need or use facts, figures and statistics? No, not at all use them to make your case. What it does mean, though, is that your letter should lean more towards the emotional side and less towards the clinical side. #4 Build to a Crescendo Great direct mail fundraising letters are like great movies they have a strong story arc that draws the reader deeper and deeper into the letter. They have a crescendo or climax, a point where the emotion and sense of purpose of the letter come together then they have the ask, which immediately follows the crescendo. For example, let s say you are writing a fundraising letter for an abused woman s shelter. You start the letter with a mention of a particular client named Maria (name changed, obviously) who came to the shelter after being abused by her husband. That story is compelling, and initially draws people into the letter. Then, you talk about what a problem spousal abuse is in your area readers see a bigger picture, and they get concerned. After that, your letter talks about the shortage of shelters for abused women in your area, which triggers alarm in your readers. You then talk about the danger for women who are abused and then have to return to their homes because of a lack of shelter beds this raises further alarm and compassion in your readers. Then you tie the problem back into Maria, the story you led with you talk about the problems she would face if she were forced to leave your shelter, and how you can only guarantee a space for each client for 3 nights, because of a lack of space. Readers are hooked, and wondering how they can help you change this by providing more beds / rooms. You briefly present your plan to open a new wing and talk about how that wing will help save dozens of women like Maria Then, you make your ask. #5 Make a Concrete Ask Direct mail letters need concrete asks. Wishy-washy asks just don t work. Whenever a nonprofit shows me a letter that they want to send out and it says something like, Please make a donation today! or Please give whatever you can to help us make this dream a reality! I know the letter is destined to fail. People don t give to generic, wishy-washy asks and when they do, they don t give much. 7
Instead, ask for $50, $100, or whatever you can afford, or your most generous donation of $100, $500, or $1,000 today! Ask for a concrete number and people will give and they will give more than if you ask for a generic donation. Wait! You re probably thinking how much should I ask for? Well, that depends on two factors: (1) Capacity: what is the capacity of this donor? How much could they afford to give and/or be willing to give through the mail? If you are tracking your donors well and have a good direct mail system, you can set it up so that the ask amounts are different for each donor and are based on the information you have stored about that donor in your donor database. Otherwise, you can generalize based on the average giving capacity of your entire list, or the entire prospect list you are using. (2) The Letter You should also tie the ask in to your letter. If your letter talks about how it costs you $50 to feed one family for one week, then an ask for $20, $40, or whatever you can afford, doesn t make much sense. But, an ask for your reader to feed 1, 5, or 10 families by giving $50, $250, $500, or your most generous donation today makes a whole lot of sense. People are more likely to give when you tie your ask back into the concrete mission and projects you discussed in your letter. #6 Edit Your Letters at Least Twice The first draft of your fundraising letter is likely to be bloated that is, it is likely to use too many words to convey each point, it may go over the same thing two or more times, and it will probably not explain everything or tell every story as succinctly as possible. People are busy, and don t want to read fluff. Thus, every letter you send out should be edited at least twice after the initial draft. Look for typos as well as phrases and sentences that don t make sense; cut the fluff; tighten up your prose; check the overall story arc to make sure it all ties together and reaches the necessary crescendo. #7 Use You A Lot Your letters should be written from a first person perspective, meaning you talk about I and we instead of the organization, or the charity. But and this is super important for writing successful letters mostly what you should be saying is you, meaning you, the donor. Your letters should focus on your work, yes, but really should focus on the donor you are writing to. This means talking about your past support, your concern for the poor, your assistance with this project, the difference you can make. You is one of the most important words in a direct mail fundraiser s lexicon. 8
Where Donor Newsletters Fit into the Fundraising Funnel As you can see from the materials above, your donor newsletter can be a powerful aid to your overall fundraising efforts, and in particular they can assist you with raising far more money from your e-mail and snail mail appeal letters. In this week s podcast, we ll take a closer look at exactly where donor newsletters fit into your overall fundraising funnel. Remember, if you have any questions about this week s class guide or podcast, please e-mail them to me at joe@thefundraisingauthority.com 9